Piczy Today

Andrea Gursky – The most expensive photographs

Andreas Gursky, Pyongyang IV, 2007

Andreas Gursky (born January 15, 1955) is a German visual artist known for his large format architecture and landscape colour photographs, often employing a high point of view. Rhein II, an image by Gursky, fetched $4.3m at Christie’s, New York on November 8, 2011, becoming the most expensive photograph ever sold.

Rhein II

Extraneous details such as dog-walkers and a factory building were removed by the artist via digital editing.Justifying this manipulation of the image, Gursky said “Paradoxically, this view of the Rhine cannot be obtained in situ, a fictitious construction was required to provide an accurate image of a modern river.”